The Netherlands' foreign minister, Halbe Zijlstra, admitted on Monday ahead of a trip to Moscow that he had lied about attending a controversial meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin before he entered politics.

Zijlstra, who became foreign minister in October, claimed to have met Putin at the president's dacha in 2006 while working for the oil company Shell. Putin supposedly told Zijlstra and others he considered Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states a part of "Greater Russia," adding: "Kazakhstan was nice to have."

But the 49-year-old told Dutch daily de Volkskrant on Monday that he had not actually been at the meeting. Rather, he had heard the remarks from a colleague who was there. To protect the identity of his source, he took credit for hearing the president talk about "Greater Russia."